THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED
The Harkis, by Philippe Faucon, takes the art of sketching to the top on an infinitely complex and painful subject, the end of the Algerian war. Presented at the Directors’ Fortnight, in Cannes, in May, this tragedy focuses on the years 1959-1962, when the harkis, these Algerians who fought alongside the French army, understood that the French State would not keep its promises to ensure their safety, once the camp is lifted, in particular by repatriating them to France – abandoning them with their families to the reprisals of the Algerians of the National Liberation Front (FLN). After The treason (2005), chronicle of the disillusionment of a French lieutenant during the Algerian war, Philippe Faucon revisits this poorly documented conflict in the cinema – let us quote The Little Soldier (1963), by Jean-Luc Godard, To be 20 years old in the Aurès (1972), by René Vautier, etc.
A few dates on the screen install the dramaturgy, opening the countdown to an announced trap, while the characters move ineluctably towards their destiny, in the desolation of the arid mountains – the film was shot in Morocco, during the pandemic of Covid-19, at a time when the Algerian borders were closed.
Precision and accuracy
Philippe Faucon banishes war films to make them smell better: gunpowder when an instructor, played by Omar Boulakirba, summarily introduces young peasants to shooting who have only ever held on to a pickaxe; of blood when one of the harkis ends up with his throat slit – off-screen, with no set effects. It is up to the actors, Algerians and Moroccans (Mohamed Mouffok, Amine Zorgane…), real blocks of silence, whose performance we must salute, that it is up to the mute pain of the harkis. It will take some time before one of the protagonists ends up dropping a ” Long live algeria ! “.
Young men enlist in the army for various reasons, and not just out of pro-French conviction, Faucon tells us, whose work, a chronicle of social exclusion, is marked by a constant concern for precision and accuracy. , of Disintegration (2011), visionary film on the attacks of January 2015, at Fatima (2015) or amin (2018). In The Harkis, there is this peasant in debt, who, with a heavy heart, says goodbye to his wife and son, donning the khaki uniform out of economic necessity. He will “armor” himself to hold on, aware of having become a traitor in the eyes of the FLN.
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